RE: So What if Abortion Ends Life?

(credit: kristina o'brien via creationswap)
While discussing same-sex marriage, I'm often told, "In twenty years, you'll look as bigoted as the white zealots that rioted during the desegregation of the Birmingham schools." That may be, only time will tell. But I wonder, what if Roe v. Wade is overturned? How will the pro-choice advocates be seen?

As science continues to make colossal advances, it becomes increasingly more and more obvious this "sack of cells" is a human child. [Enter Rhetoric] Yes, I agree, an acorn isn’t an oak tree, but this is a bad parallel. The human equivalent of this oft used false analogy would be: a sperm isn’t a baby. I don’t know anyone who disagrees with that.

If you want to bring plants into this, a more precise comparison would state: a growing sapling isn’t an oak tree. Begging the question, why not? Even still, this analogy means to distance the discourse away from a living, breathing, human being to a seemingly inanimate object. By engaging in this poor rhetoric, we begin comparing acorns and babies.

With 4D ultrasounds, and videos like this, it becomes near impossible to call a fetus merely potential life. It’s ironic that Christians, who ostensibly hate science, continually cite scientific studies as evidence of human life, while others resort to rhetoric.

Shockingly, some, like Peter Singer, professor of bioethics at Princeton University, freely concede that the ‘sack of cells’ in a womb is in fact a child, but still deny that it is wrong to take innocent human life.

“[The argument that a fetus is not alive] is a resort to a convenient fiction that turns an evidently living being into one that legally is not alive. Instead of accepting such fictions, we should recognize that the fact that a being is human, and alive, does not in itself tell us whether it is wrong to take that being's life.” Peter Singer, Rethinking Life and Death:The Collapse of Our Traditional Ethics, 105.

But Singer is a man, and men don’t count when discussing issues of women’s health. What has Athens to do with Jerusalem? Fair enough. There are outspoken women, such as Mary Elizabeth Williams, who aren’t ashamed to admit that the life inside of them is a human. According to Williams’ logic, because the baby is not autonomous, it is the woman’s (host) choice if she should eliminate the child (parasite). She urges women not to be intimidated by “wing-nuts” who try to trick them into admitting that abortion is murder.

"Yet I know that throughout my own pregnancies, I never wavered for a moment in the belief that I was carrying a human life inside of me. I believe that’s what a fetus is: a human life. And that doesn’t make me one iota less solidly pro-choice... All life is not equal...a fetus can be a human life without having the same rights as the woman in whose body it resides. She’s the boss." Read her article, ‘So what if an abortion ends a life?’

I think she is wrong on so many levels. But I think she is especially wrong when she suggests support for Roe v. Wade is at an all-time high. Williams must have missed the V.P. debate last year when Joe Biden warned our nation about letting a right-wing conservative get in office, “The next president will get 1 or 2 SCOTUS nominees. That’s how close overturning Roe v. Wade is.” I believe the tides are changing, and I’m not alone. And, God willing, when they do, what of the outspoken proponents of the pro-choice position? Will they weep for the 50+ million babies slaughtered in the U.S. alone? Will they be seen and charged as murderers? I can’t say. But what I can say is this: all (including me) have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. And God is faithful to forgive; even murderers. We need only repent.

“I acknowledged my sin to you, and I did not cover my iniquity; I said, “I will confess my transgressions to the LORD,” and you forgave the iniquity of my sin" (Psalm 32:5).